Composition Commons^™

Iet., Andrew Maxbauer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In iet, the phonetic aspects of speech, as well as additional vocal noises, are employed in preference to more conventional semantic and syntactic values, derived from recognized language. The lack of pre-existing text removes the necessity to flesh out the skeleton of a pre-existing structure, and in turn creates the possibility of having a musical discourse in which each vocalization serves to modify the sound world of the piece in a specifically conceived manner. Thusly, the singers utilize only fragments of speech, uttering single syllables, as well as other more marginal vocal sounds such as audible breathing, and the smacking …

Baby Book For Soprano And Orchestra., Lauren Spavelko

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Baby Book is a 12-minute work for soprano and orchestra. It sets three poems from Chloe Yelena Miller's collection of the same name. It will later be expanded into a six-movement work. The cycle explores miscarriage, pregnancy, and motherhood.

I. Great Aunt Dora

II. Objects

III. Children's Pool Game

Great Aunt Dora is a real person; she is the poet's own great aunt, a dearly beloved family matriarch. This poem is a conversation between the mother and the growing child inside her. Great Aunt Dora passed away before she could meet the child. Thus, the conversation is bittersweet, but full …

The Wishing Well: A Children's Ballet (A Composer's Perspective), Lydia Dempsey

Honors Projects

As a composer, I am passionate about introducing audiences to contemporary classical music. I chose to compose a twenty-five-minute children's ballet titled The Wishing Well based on the fairytale Diamonds and Toads. It premiered on April 2, 2016 at the Bowling Green Performing Arts Center in collaboration with choreographer Sophia Schmitz and conductor Robert Ragoonanan. Other elements of the project included set design, costuming, lighting, audio and video recording, and marketing. The mission was to provide the local community with a free arts event, introduce young audiences to music and ballet, enrich people’s lives through music and dance, provide …

Musical Contextualization In The Local Church: A Pragmatic Exploration Concerning The Philosophy And Methodology Of Assimilating Sacred Music Into The Worship Vocabulary Of A Congregation, Kaleb Gooden

Senior Honors Theses

God’s mandate for all worship pastors is that they minister to their local body of believers in an effective way. This directive necessitates the use of scripturally and culturally appropriate music that clearly communicates the Gospel to the church congregation. This creative thesis further investigates musical contextualization in the local church.

Five philosophical pillars represent the most basic structure on which the entire process of local church contextualization stands. The minister must be rooted in scripture, led by the Spirit, present-minded, future-driven, and committed to service. After evaluating these philosophical concepts, this thesis will then explore the methodological contextualization process …

Little Birds, Anna Wagner, Daniel Swilley, Faculty Advisor

John Wesley Powell Student Research Conference

No abstract provided.

A Tank Full Of Wishful Thinking: Crystallizing The Rhythms Of The Road, Leanna K. Smithberger

Showcase of Graduate Student Scholarship and Creative Activities

This presentation is a personal exploration of American car culture — the roads that enable it, the everyday actions that sustain it, and the values that justify it. I use a constellation of mobilities, autoethnography, and rhythmanalysis in order to tap into the political, personal, and aesthetic ways our road-centered culture shapes and constrains our lives in mundane and extraordinary ways. I argue that our road system of mobility is largely taken for granted, and is stubbornly persistent due to deeply held cultural values. I use a variety of artistic, evocative methods, including narrative, poetry, and music, because I argue …

An Approach To Undergraduate Research - Developing An Understanding Of The Musical Process Through The Editing Of Early Music, Jared Chance Taylor, Gary W. Cobb

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

This project is an outgrowth of a larger project that involves the eventual compilation of a series of Italian madrigals into a modern performing edition. The purpose of this project was to transcribe and edit a madrigal from Carlo Grossi’s L’Anfione musiche da camera or per tavola (Venice, 1675) in order to better understand and be able to perform an Italian madrigal as it might have been done in the late seventeenth century. Through a process of research, examination and transcription, I was able to not only to transcribe Grossi’s music into modern notation but was also able to also …

What Do You Mean, "Practice"? Theorizing The Writing-Music Connection, Callie Elise Compton

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Researchers in the field of composition studies have frequently made allusions to musicians when they’ve discussed the role of practice in gaining skill. In doing so, however, they’ve risked making speculative rather than testable claims and separating composition studies from recent insights on practice from other disciplines such as education and music psychology. These fields, I argue, offer testable frameworks with which composition instructors and scholars can teach and study writing practice. Such frameworks are necessary because composition researchers need to supplement qualitative studies of writers and writing with quantitative data to generate replicable tests of teaching methods that may …

Breakdown: Vol 1: Text And Music, A Survey Of Methodology And Process, Vol 2: In Full Score., Andrew Synnott

Doctoral

The work presented here is in two parts. The first part is an opera composed to a libretto by the Irish playwright, John Breen. This opera is in three acts and concerns the performance of four famous performance art pieces; Rhythm 0 by Marina Abramović, Breakdown by Michael Landy, Velocity Piece by Barry La Va and How To Explain Pictures To a Dead Hare by Joseph Beuys. These art works are presented as the action of the opera and happen concurrently on the stage during the first two acts. The third act reflects on the action of acts one and …

Aesthetic Meaning In The Congregational Masses Of James Macmillan, Stephen Kingsbury

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Examines the interconnetions between MacMillan’s congregational masses and other works by the composer. The compositional and philosophical commonalities between paired compositions deepens the philosophical and aesthetic meaning of both works. An understanding of these parallels and the manner in which they are worked out in practice provides an important insight into the composer’s intentions, making the performance of the masses within the context of the worship service more relevant to the spiritual experience of the congregant and provides insight into the interconnectivity of MacMillan’s compositional output.

Counteredpoint, Gary Barwin

The Goose

Poetry by Gary Barwin

Society Of Composers Region Iii Conference February 25-27, 2016, Mark Zanter

All Performances

No abstract provided.

2015-2016 New Music Festival, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Lisa Leonard

New Music Festival

Tenth Annual Music Festival

• Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Composer-in-Residence
• Lisa Leonard, Director

Tuesday, February 23, 2016 at 7:30 pm

• Spotlight I: Young Composers

Wednesday, February 24, 2016 at 7:30 pm

• Master Class with Ellen Taaffe Zwilich

Thursday, February 25, 2016 at: 7:30 pm

• Spotlight II: Music of Ellen Taaffe Zwilich

Friday, February 26, 2016 at 7:30 pm

• Spotlight III: An Informance with Penderecki String Quartet

The Motivic Economy In Nikolai Medtner's Sonata Romantica, Nellie S. Seng-Quinn

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation focuses on the motivic aspect of Medtner’s Sonata Romantica Op. 53, No. 1. Medtner, in his book, The Muse and the Fashion, has stressed through numerous statements why the initial theme is of utmost importance to him and how the entire work should be derived from the theme. The goal is to trace the journey of Medtner’s themes through the course of the sonata. Using various methods of musical analysis, I will determine whether the theme is indeed the source of latter material found within the sonata.

Speaking Of Consequences: Contemporary Music For Political Discourse, Elizabeth Adams

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation reads politically works by Georges Aperghis, Rick Burkhardt, Mark Enslin, and Elizabeth Hoffman. Chapter 1 argues that suspending intelligibility stimulates the audience to imagine alternative meanings and ways the music might go, in an orientation that is politically desirable. Synthesizing theorizations by Herbert Brün, Joseph Dubiel, Shoshana Felman, and Enslin, it catalogues four techniques for suspending intelligibility, and analyses Enslin’s Sonata Quijada. Chapter 2 suggests that we read politically metaphors of agency and power sharing in chamber textures, and translate those metaphors into our social and political lives. It draws on Elisabeth Le Guin’s reading of Boccherini, …

Issues Of Rhythm, Symmetry, And Style In Alfred Schnittke's Concerto For Piano And Strings, Ilya Mayzus

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation takes as its subject of study Schnittke’s Concerto for Piano and Strings and seeks to examine several interconnected issues in Schnittke’s music: the problem of unification of disparate and conflicting forces that generally describe his style; the wave-like shape of intensification followed by a pullback that can be seen as acting on different temporal levels; and one of narrative meaning. Particular attention is given to symmetry in various manifestations, which the composer considered a necessary ingredient, comparing rhythmic regularity to periodicity found in nature, while at the same time undermining it through the use of asymmetries in order …

We Need A Church That's Inside-Out, Heather Josselyn-Cranson

Northwestern Review

This hymn gives voice to one frustration that many Christians feel: a despair over watching Christian factions argue about doctrine while the poor suffer outside of church walls. This hymn calls us to see the self-obsession which prevents us from attending to those in need (first stanza), confess our neglect of Jesus' mandate to care for others (second stanza), and turn away from the distractions of petty bickering toward the expression of Christ's peace, grace, and love to all those outside the church (third stanza).

Days Will Come That Sap Our Vigor, Heather Josselyn-Cranson

Northwestern Review

"Days Will Come that Sap our Vigor" speaks encouragement to individuals and congregations in the face of exhaustion (the first stanza), depression (the second stanza), and even death (the last stanza). In each case, God restores to us strength, hope, and life. The tune for this text, FALLS PARK, alludes to the fact that the author wrote the hymn text after visiting Falls Park in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Jonathan Green, Charlie Schlenker

Interviews for WGLT

Charlie Schlenker from WGLT interviews IWU Provost Jonathan Green. A January 2016 recital at Illinois Wesleyan featured several original pieces composed by Provost Green.

See WGLT for more information about the interview. A transcript of this interview can be found by clicking the download link above and to the right of this page.

Te Deum, Anthony Elia

Bridwell Library Research

Te Deum--87pp.

Introductory note: "The text of Te Deum has been set to music by many composers. The Latin text 'Te Deum laudames: te Dominum confitemur' begins the work, translated as 'We praise you, O God: we acknowledge you to be the Lord.' The writing of this work was inspired initially by the work of Arvo Pärt, whose setting I find to be one of the most beautiful. I share in the admiration of Pärt's music and his contribution to the genre of sacred choral writing with my friend and colleague Dr. Robert Saler, who has promoted Pärt's work with …